NVIDIA’s New Kai Platform Hopes to Spawn New Generation of Quad-Core Tablets Priced at $199

If you’re looking for a respectable Android tablet for less than $200, you’re best option right now is likely to be the Amazon Kindle Fire. It’s not the fastest, most advanced tablet there is, but it’s from a reputable brand and it’s a terrific entry-level device.

However, NVIDIA has been working on a new platform called Kai that could spawn a new generation of quad-core Android tablets that will blow the Kindle Fire right out of the water, while maintaining the same $199 price tag.

Kai isn’t just a piece of hardware, according to NVIDIA — but a platform that boasts “a lot of the secret sauce” from the company’s quad-core Tegra 3 chip, mixed with low cost components and new innovations. Rob Csonger, NVIDIA’s Vice President, explains:

Our strategy on Android is simply to enable quad-core tablets running Android Ice Cream Sandwich to be developed and brought out to market at the $199 price point, and the way we do that is a platform we’ve developed called Kai. So this uses a lot of the secret sauce that’s inside Tegra 3 to allow you to develop a tablet at a much lower cost, by using a lot of innovation that we’ve developed to reduce the power that’s used by the display and use lower cost components within the tablet.

So it seems the comments made by NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun that suggested we may see $199 Tegra 3 tablets this summer weren’t just idle speculation, but a teaser for things to come. The company has already teamed up with Asus to create the quad-core ME370T tablet — which is identical to the Kai slate pictured above — that’s priced at $250, but that could be considered expensive when those $199 devices begin to enter the market.

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Killian Bell is a 20-something technology journalist based in a tiny town in England. He has an obsession with that little company in Cupertino...Killian Bell is a 20-something technology journalist based in a tiny town in England. He has an obsession with that little company in Cupertino...